Lifesavers
True confessions by an errant fan of Jello Biafra and the Dead Kennedys.

By J.H. Tompkins

I'M A JELLO Biafra loyalist – I want to go on record – and proud of it. Biafra saved my life, and I owe him for it; you don't run out on a debt like that. I was in free fall during the fall of 1978, the first time I heard the Dead Kennedys. How bad was it? I was about to buy a fucking Tom Petty album, OK? Someone dragged me to a gig at the Deaf Club (I figured the name itself was some kind of joke) to see a band with a singer named Jello – my friend couldn't remember what the group was called – which excited me so much that I washed down three quaaludes with a pint of Pagan Pink T-Bird (ironists, even then, we referred to the mix as an LSD cocktail). I can't remember what I expected from a guy named Jello – heft, for sure – but the band's name worked, and even though the lights went out after "Holiday in Cambodia," I was pretty sure it was the best song I'd heard in years.

I spent a few months on the periphery of a small, incestuous, wild San Francisco punk scene before deciding there was more to life than crushing boredom and a really bleak future; I dove into the scene. Looking back, it was Biafra's 1979 mayoral campaign – "There's always room for Jello!" the slogan went – that did the trick. It wasn't politics, the ballot box, or anything like that (I have yet to cast a vote) but rather the mockery Biafra's campaign made of the pompous process itself. Biafra made front-page news by getting married in a Colma cemetery on Halloween, he was the best quote in town, and most important of all – to me, anyway – the Dead Kennedy's must have played 20 gigs between Oct. 1, 1979, and Election Day, and I caught nearly all of them.

Nothing I'd listened to before sounded the same, which meant that my life, which revolved around music, was dramatically changed. If Springsteen was the best of the old school, his plodding midtempo grooves weren't just indulgent, they were full of holes so big you could drive Bob Seeger's trucks through 'em. He made music for autoworkers who thought Japanese cars were a fad; the punks were their kids, who inherited an America in decline. I couldn't claim the pedigree, but had the Dead Kennedys not entered my life when they did, I'd be dead or maybe a lawyer.

Recently I came across a Web site featuring an interview with Biafra that seemed to date back to the mid '90s. This exchange caught my eye:

Question: "Is there a spiritual base attached to your songs?"

Biafra: "I hope not."

Biafra was a virtuoso blasphemer, and I love him for it. It was that spirit, invoked by the band's unique chemistry, that inspired six musicians – Biafra, East Bay Ray, Klaus Flouride, D.H. Peligro, a guy named Carlos who called himself 6025 and lasted only a few months, and Bruce Slesinger, known as Ted, the DKs' rock-solid first drummer – to make music that placed them among punk's most important bands.

I did at least two long interviews with Biafra over the years, and though I never got to know him – we've been introduced for the first time several times – I've always wanted to tell him how much I loved the Dead Kennedys.

That's I got excited when I got a letter from him the other day – an e-mail, actually – and though it was a long way from personal, it was intimate. Read on:

JELLO BIAFRA APOLOGIZES TO FANS FOR LATEST DEAD KENNEDYS "DEAF CLUB" FIASCO

I am sorry I have to be the whistle blower yet again. I am deeply embarrassed by the poor quality of their new Live at the Deaf Club CD. It could have been a good album. But in my opinion the sound quality and remix are so lame it's not even as good as the versions on Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death. And those mixes are almost 20 years old....

Please, folks, I had nothing to do with this! Like the fake Dead Kennedys 'reunion' tours, I did not authorize either of these projects and was not allowed any meaningful input at all....

As everyone knows, the last few years have been ugly – for both sides of the story, go to (www.alternativetentacles.com) and (www.deadkennedys.com). I've not read much of the fine print on the legal battle – frankly, I don't care what happens between the fighting band members. I do think it's unfortunate that the DKs, if they were once friends, don't seem to be friends any longer. I have strong feelings about the value of hanging on to the people one shares life with.

That's why, I suppose, I'm still a fan of Biafra. I don't think he was the Dead Kennedys. Ray's skewed take on Ventures-style surf guitar was original and sometimes inspired; the rhythm section – with Slesinger and with Peligro – was always solid. But he seemed to be the band's moral compass, and his political work since then has been important and often interesting. At this point I've got better things to do than rewrite my assessment of what made the DKs tick.

Besides, for me and for nearly every single Dead Kennedys fan on earth, the band's importance began and ended with its music. We could get the politics elsewhere; we couldn't get that music anywhere but from them. And because of the ugliness, and the lawsuits, there's been music – and lots of it; most recently the album Biafra refers to, and before that, reissues of the rest of the band's catalog.

And you know what? I've played Live at the Deaf Club about 20 times in the last two weeks. Why? Because before that I listened to a tape I bootlegged on a $60 cassette recorder at a Dead Kennedys' gig at the Center for Independent Living in October 1979. I know it was illegal, but the quality of the sound is so bad I'm the only person I know who'll listen to it, probably because I'm the only person I know who got their life saved by the Dead Kennedys, back when I was putting my paycheck into my arms and life sucked and I almost bought a Tom Petty album.

I'm still a Biafra loyalist – although I might have a small disloyal streak – but that music means something to me. I apologize for buying it but not for loving it.